If it be true, as W. B. Stevenson reports,[216] that King Charles IV. decreed that all foundling children in Spanish America were to be regarded as of noble birth, in order that all professions might be open to them, we cannot but consider that this mode of thought and action, on the part of a ruler in the country of the Inquisition, was a shining example for our own time.
“Society,” says Eduard Reich, “as well as the Church, sins against the laws of morality, as long as it stands in the way of the advancement of illegitimate children, either by the maintenance of miserable prejudices against these poor beings, or by positive decrees. We shall never be able, even should the human race enter Paradise, to make it impossible for extra-conjugal procreation to occur: love-children will always exist. Since, then, it is not the fault of the latter that their parents have brought them into the world; and, further, since, even if all men were married, one could not impute it to a man as a moral transgression, if he, in the plenitude of his procreative powers, had intercourse with a beautiful girl, instead of with his wife (suffering, for example, from cancer, or some other serious disease); and since, on the other hand, a wife still in the full bloom of youth could not be blamed for unfaithfulness if, her elderly husband having been impotent for several years, she now has intercourse with a vigorous and healthy young man—for such reasons, let us throw the veil of forgetfulness over all well-intentioned human weaknesses, and no longer ask whether a citizen of the world has been engendered in the marriage-bed, or has sprung from the well-spring of love. To the reasonable being it is the man himself who is of value; and only blockheads, simpletons, and donkeys will inquire as to his origin.”[217]
And yet one more question I will address in conclusion to the adherents of coercive marriage morality. How many free-love relationships, how many illegitimate children have there not been at all times among the cultured classes, even among the pillars of the throne and the altar, precisely among those who, on account of their higher spiritual development, ought to possess a stronger ethical sensibility (nota bene, from the standpoint of coercive marriage morality). It would be an interesting task to collect statistics relating to such free unions, and the resulting “illegitimate” offspring, in the case of notable men and women! The marriage fanatics would be horrified! Quite apart from the innumerable secret relationships of this nature, and their consequences, a short observation and enumeration of the illegitimate loves and parentage of men and women of high standing, alike spiritual and moral, would alone suffice to illuminate the actual conditions, and would enable us to draw remarkable conclusions regarding coercive marriage. It is my intention, as soon as possible, to represent in a brief work the rôle of free love in the history of civilization, and to adduce proofs that free love is very well compatible with a moral life. Who would venture to reproach with immorality a Bürger, a Jean Paul, a Gutzkow, a Karoline Schlegel, a George Sand, or even a Goethe?[218]
It is a simple evolutionary necessity that free love, in association with progressive differentiation and with the reshaping of economic conditions, will find its moral justification also for those who at present judge and condemn it from the point of view of long outworn social conditions.
[186] M. Nordau, “The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization.” See also P. Näcke, “Einiges zur Frauenfrage und zur sexuellen Abstinenz”—“A Contribution to the Woman’s Question and to the Question of Sexual Abstinence.” Näcke condemns this duplex morality, and demands for the woman in principle the same sexual freedom that is granted to the man.
[187] One of the most remarkable instances of free love as a popular institution was the “island custom” of the (so-called) Isle of Portland. Here, until well on into the nineteenth century, experimental cohabitation was universal, and marriage did not take place until the woman became pregnant. But if, as a result of this experimental cohabitation, “the woman does not prove with child, after a competent time of courtship, they conclude they are not destined by Providence for each other; they therefore separate; and as it is an established maxim, which the Portland women observe with great strictness, never to admit a plurality of lovers at one time, their honour is in no way tarnished. She just as soon gets another suitor (after the affair is declared to be broken off) as if she had been left a widow, or that nothing had ever happened, but that she had remained an immaculate virgin” (Hutchins, “History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset,” vol. ii., p. 820, 1868). So faithfully was this “island custom” observed that, on the one hand, during a long period no single bastard was born on the “island,” and, on the other, every marriage was fertile. But when, for the further development of the Portland stone trade, workmen from London, with the “wild love” habits of the large town, came to reside in Portland, these men took advantage of the “island custom,” and then refused to marry the girls with whom they had cohabited. Thus, in consequence of freer intercourse with the “civilized” world, the “Portland custom” has gradually fallen into desuetude. But the words I have emphasized in the quotation show how faithfully the conditions of “free love,” as defined in this work, were observed in Portland. An account of Portland, with allusions to the local practice of “free love,” will be found in Thomas Hardy’s novel, “The Well Beloved.”—Translator.
[188] A. Blaschko, “Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 12 (Berlin, 1902).
[189] Cf. Helen Zimmern, “Mary Wollstonecraft” in Deutsche Rundschau, 1889, vol. xv., Heft 11, pp. 259-263. Consult also C. Kegan Paul, “William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries,” 2 vols. (London, 1876).
[190] “Shelley’s Poetical Works,” edited by Edward Dowden, p. 42 (Macmillan, 1891).